Water Restrictions, Forest And Land Fires In South Kalimantan Are Extinguished Using Detergen Mixture

The Manggala Agni Karhutla Task Force is struggling to be surrounded by smoke to extinguish the forest and land fires in Liang Anggang Village, Tanah Laut Regency, South Kalimantan, Wednesday, August 2, 2023. (ANTARA-Tumpal A A)

SOUTH KALIMANTAN - Forest and land fires (karhutla) in South Kalimantan (Kalsel) were destroyed by a mixture of water and determinants due to limited water to extinguish the hotspots.

Member of the Tanah Laut Regency forest and land fire task force (Satgas), Pamlan, said the method was used to extinguish tens of hectares of land in Liang Anggang Village, Bati-Bati, Tanah Laut Regency.

Based on observations, as of Wednesday 2 August, at 17.45 WITA, the forest and land fires incident devoured two areas about three kilometers away.

"We have decided to extinguish the hotspots that are closer to residential areas," said Member of the Karhutla Manggala Agni Task Force, Tanah Laut Regency, Pamlan in Tanah Laut, South Kalimantan, Wednesday, August 2, confiscated by Antara.

Pamlan said the forest and land fires incident occurred since 10:00 WITA through information forwarded by the Air Task Force, there were quite a lot of fire points so that officers had experienced problems related to the main area that had to be extinguished.

"The forest and land fires Task Force has been going on and on to deal with the flames since this morning," he said.

He said that outage efforts in the field that approached settlements experienced limited water points at the scene, so the team decided to use determinants mixed with water to accelerate the widespread extinguishing of hotspots.

According to him, the mixture of determinants and water is able to cool the land so that the hot state of the fire can be reduced quickly due to the chemicals contained in the determinant.

He revealed that the general obstacle for handling forest and land fires is road access, officers always have difficulty reaching due to the fire incident in the interior which is quite dangerous by land routes.

Pamlan also said that land that cannot be reached has the potential to expand to tens of hectares, but Manggala Agni is always ready to be at the forefront of supervising and tackling forest and land fires with various efforts.

Furthermore, Manggala Agni coordinates with related institutions for prevention and control including BPBD, TNI and Polri.

"As long as we are still able, we continue to extinguish the fire even until the evening," said Pamlan.